The
IPTC-NAA standards

Way back in the dark ages (OK, it was the 1970's) of image
transmission, AP and other wire services actually sent images via machines
that were little
more than fancy fax machines. A black and white image was printed out line
by line similar to how an inkjet printer of today works. Alongside
the image would be typewritten information regarding caption,
location source, crediting, etc. Typically the caption would either be cut
off, or photocopied, and the two would go their separate ways. The text would
be sent to editors, while the “photo” would go elsewhere for
reproduction. If one or the other got lost or misplaced it would take valuable
time to
track
it
down and
possibly mean missing a deadline. Obviously there had to be a better way.

Jump forward to today, where each image file can be saved using
Adobe Photoshop with this text information embedded within the file. Anyone
that's worked around newspapers, with digital images or image databases for
a while has probably heard the acronyms IPTC or IPTC-NAA
tossed around, usually when discussing the use of the File Info
feature of photoshop. But few understand what they mean or what they stand
for. The short story is that IPTC, the International Press Telecommunications
Council,
was one of the groups responsible for encouraging the standards necessary
to“marry” the text information describing an image with the
image data itself. The NAA is the Newspaper Association of America (formerly
ANPA),
and they also have been responsible for developing standards for exchanging
information between news operations, including information used to describe
images.

At this point, some of you are thinking,“OK that's enough
about history, I'm doomed to repeat it, just show me how to use these IPTC
“thingies” to help me find my images.” If that's the case,
you may wish to jump to the chart of Sample IPTC fields
below. If you need some help in figuring out how each of these IPTC fields
actually appears in your version of Photoshop, download the IPTC
Core mapped fields PDF. For those that want a little bit more background
about how these standards came to be, read on.

A Brief
History of the IPTC
Standards regarding metadata for news images have evolved over time, beginning
in the 1970's when some were first issued as“guidelines.” However,
most of these efforts were regional in nature, and focused on text. As news
organizations moved from manual typewriters to CRTs (Cathode Ray Tubes) and
VDTs (Video Display Terminals) these standards were revised and became more
specific. Only later, as the world embraced the web, did the standards begin
to address multimedia content.

In 1979, the International Press Telecommunications Council
(IPTC) approved its first news exchange standard IPTC
7901. This provided metadata and content in plain text only; the only
delimiters allowed were spaces and line breaks. Despite these limitations,
IPTC 7901/ANPA 1312 is still in use. In the '80s, the IPTC and ANPA standards
were revised, updated and expanded into other areas such as radio and broadcast
television. As the '90s approached, these various groups focused their efforts
on a new standard that could serve various media, not just text.

The IPTC/NAA
“header(s)"
The Information Interchange Model (IIM) concept was launched in 1991, providing
a new way to handle “digital resources” with metadata and content
held in a binary structured framework. Around 1994 the “IPTC header(s)” are
born when Adobe adds the ability to insert metadata information describing
image
content to digital image files. An Adobe specific container or “wrapper”
encapsulated a subset of the IPTC’s IIM metadata structure, which could be
edited using a Photoshop form.

Since that time, many third party developers have created software
applications that are able to read and write to these “IPTC headers.”Some
consider it metadata “black art” as there still can be issues with where
this IPTC header information is stored within various image file formats;
and there can be occasional glitches with how certain characters appear when
exchanging files from Macintosh
to Windows operating systems and vice versa.

XML is like HTML, but where HTML is mostly concerned with the
presentation of data, XML is concerned with the “representation”
of data. On top of that, XML is non-proprietary, operating-system-independent,
fairly simple to interpret, text-based and cheap. RDF is the WC3's solution
to integrate a variety of different applications such as library catalogs,
world-wide directories, news feeds, software, as well as collections of music,
images, and events using XML as an interchange syntax. Together the specifications
provide a method that uses a lightweight ontology based on the Dublin
Core which also supports the “Semantic
Web” (easy exchange of knowledge on the Web).

IPTC
goes XMPThat's probably one of the reasons
why, around 2001, that Adobe introduced its XML based XMP technology to replace
the “Image
resource block” technology of nineties. XMP stands for“Extensible Metadata
Platform", Adobe's mixture of XML and RDF. You may have noticed, if you
ever saved out the file info data in earlier versions of Photoshop, that it
was saved as an“.ffo” extension. The lastest versions of Photoshop
(v7.01 and CS) use this XMP
(eXtensible Metadata Platform). It is a labelling technology that lets
users embed data about a file in the file itself, not just photoshop TIF
and
Jpeg images. It is currently supported in a number of Adobe applications
and is available under an open source licence. In photoshop 7 and CS the
file
info is saved using the extension“.xmp” (signifying the use of
XML/RDF). Photoshop 7 and CS differ a little in which IPTC fields are used.
If you want to see how they compare to older versions of photoshop, or other
IPTC compliant viewing or annotating utilities take a look at the old version
of the IPTC mapped fields
PDF. The new chart goes by the filename, "IPTC
Core mapped fields PDF" and includes field mapping for the IPTC Core
Schema for XMP, as well as for several new versions of imaging applications
and databases.

In early 2004, Gary Cosimini of Adobe gave a presentation on
XMP at the IPTC Spring Meeting. Cosimini and Gunar Penikis of Adobe and Michael
Steidl of the IPTC discussed how to best collaborate on a smooth transition
of the old “IPTC headers” to the new XMP framework. In June 21, 2004, Adobe
announced its collaboration
with the IPTC, and in July 2004, a working group led by Penikis and Steidl
is set up, and volunteers, including David Riecks of Controlled Vocabulary,
are solicited as volunteers.

IPTC
Core Schema for XMP
The "IPTC Core Schema for XMP" version 1.0 specification
was released publicly on March 21, 2005. You can download the custom panels
for Adobe Photoshop CS, as well as a full package that includes a comprehensive
user guide to these panels (which I authored for the working group), example
photos with embedded XMP information, the specification document, and an implementation
guide for developers from the IPTC
site.

In addition Riecks developed a set of "Video
Tutorials" introducing the IPTC Core Schema for XMP, for which
the Stock Artists Alliance (SAA) graciously provided webspace (scroll
down to the list of five screencasts when you arrive at the site above).
If you don't have Adobe Photoshop CS and want to learn more about the
panels
before
downloading, this is a way for you to see them in action. These screencasts
are Quicktime movies which are compatible with both Mac and Windows operating
systems.
Depending
on your operating system, each file will need to partially or
fully
download before you can begin viewing. Expect a slight delay (30-40 seconds
on broadband) before you can begin seeing a video.

IPTC
Core 1.1 and Extensions 1.0 Released
The "IPTC Core Schema version 1.1 specification along with
a new set of fields dubbed Extension 1.0 were released in June of 2008.
These new fields in the Extension were developed by
the
IPTC
Photo
Metadata
Working
Group
to
address
specific
needs
of
the
Stock
Photography
and
Cultural Heritage communities. The IPTC Core updates are fairly minor by comparison.
Custom panels for installing into the Adobe Creative Suite should be available
in first quarter of 2009, along with a new User's Guide.

Which
Fields should I use?Depends, if you are working for a newspaper, they will want it one way,
If for a magazine, perhaps another, the fields suggested for use with stock
images are indicated in white on the chart
of Sample IPTC fields at the bottom of this page.

You don't have to own a copy of the latest version of Photoshop
in order to view the photo metadata (IPTC, Exif or XMP) within a digital
image. Jeffrey Friedl has created a very useful tool that he calls Jeffrey's
Exif Viewer which leverages Phil Harvey's ExifTool and makes
it possible to view this image information through any web
browser. To see how easy it is to use, view this short screencast of
Jeffrey's Exif Viewer in action.

Sample
IPTC Fields: (suggested ones
for stock images on white at top, other fields useful for news /editorial
on gray background those in pink should be avoided)

IPTC
Field

Description

Example

Max
Length (# characters)*

IIM
Field #

Description/Caption

Long
form description of Subject and related subject data in a Natural
Language caption

Dictator
Simms addresses a crowd at the first futbol match of the season.....etc

*According to strict interpretation, some applications may allow for
longer entries, but you need to test to make sure additional data
is not lost in other IPTC editors. Technically this is the number of
"octets" rather than characters, so if using latin characters which
may contain accents, diacritical marks (á,ç,ñ)
— or when using other non-latin alphabets
— each character may
take more than a single octet to express.

** Formerly known as the“slug” (keyword) field in the old
standard, but expanded in newer versions.

*** This field has been expanded from the current single alphabetic
character under NAARTNDA to a maximum of three, in common use under
IPTC. It is likely, however, that many news agencies will continue the
current practice of using one character in the NAA-RTNDA implementation
of the standard and three characters in the IPTC implementation. Subject
to agreement in North America, it may be possible to use the second
character position for the RTNDA version of category codes where they
differ from NAA. Like many datasets in the new standard, it can be repeated
-- meaning a story can have more than one supplemental category. The
American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) wire category codes
are available in PDF
from from the Newspapers Association of America site (Google
HTML version), or you can view a subset of them used by the Clarinet
News Organization.

‡ The keyword field is a“multi-value” field. You can
have unlimited numbers of keywords and phrases but no single keyword
or key phrase can exceed this 64 character maximum limit.